In Search of Excellence

by Jeff Kempe

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

That, of course, was the name of a best-selling management book that came out in the early eighties. It not so much defined my market philosophy as confirmed what I’d already learned from Nordstrom: Concentrate on excellence and rewards will follow. Concentrate on rewards, and you’re pretty much assured of being consigned to mediocrity.

What’s been interesting to watch in the twenty five or so intervening years isn’t so much that nearly every business gives lip service to the tenet, but what’s happened to the definition of ‘excellence’. The education establishment meets failing test scores by dumbing down the tests. Grades are allocated not on merit, but on the perceived sensitivities of the students, just as soccer games are played without keeping score so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings. You can get an undergrad English Lit degree at the University of Washington without ever having studied Shakespeare. In the frenetic twenty-first “I want it now!” century reading has become a chore, replaced by vapid visual stimulation and fifteen minute podcasts. Writing skills have devolved to YouTube. Joseph Conrad need not apply.

So what? Here’s so what: Words matter. Reading builds vocabulary, writing exercises its use. But not only is someone who draws on 150,000 words able to communicate concepts better than one who’s limited to the normal 50,000, but he or she is infinitely better able to conceive them in the first place. I’ve said — often — that good writers invariably make good thinkers, largely because they do.

All of which was going through my mind as I read this weekend’s BHB posts.

Whew. Excellent.

Before I started my own RE blog I searched the internet to see how others were doing it. Lots of people giving advice, most of it in the genre of Kris’ exquisite satire: Keep it short, be witty, illustrate cleverly. Most blogs seemed to keep diligently to that formula, but two things were apparent: that A) Most were blogging just to be blogging, and not to be actually saying anything; and B) the “Keep it short” formula was necessary to mask an inability to string words together coherently. With enormous respect for Brian and five or six others, Active Rain provides the perfect example: Writing for points and positioning is the essential platform for learning how to be manifestly uninteresting.

Then I ran across Bloodhound.

I don’t think I’m in any danger of inflating Greg’s ego: his writing (and thinking) is brilliant. Not brilliant for a Real Estate blogger, just brilliant. Couple that with the passion he has for our business, including his delight in standing up to the industry pharisees, and you have the anchor of a blog that’s not just fascinating, but has the potential to inspire change: Redfin’s epitaph will read “RIP, in spite of the business Greg Swann drove our way.”

And the supporting cast? Kris could be this century’s Florence King. Teri is the best writer among those at Project Blogger — by far. Lani? Hilarious. I’ve said before, I glean more real information from Brian, Russ, Jeff, Michael — and everyone else here — in a given week than I get, say, in a year of Title sponsored seminars.

[Note: If you’re looking for a self-deprecating “I don’t deserve to be here” platitude, sorry, no. As a kid I was sent to bed without dinner if I ended a sentence with a preposition; I get hives around dangling participles. I love to write.]

So, Greg? Excellence is its own reward, and what you’ve put together is beyond excellent. Awards — whether CoRE or Inman — are profoundly superficial.

Much more importantly: Excellence always attracts. What impresses me as much as anything is the quality of people reading here and commenting; some of the brightest people in the industry.

These are the people who are going to change our business for the better.

And isn’t that what blogging is all about?